I watched Dad’s face as he scanned the crowd of people. When it lit up he said, ‘Cait, Pheebs, I want to introduce you to someone.’

We walked towards a woman leaning over a card table covered in climate change info, speaking to an old man with a pen in hand poised to sign a petition.

Dad stood back while they spoke, and I looked at the woman behind the table thinking how cool her ‘There’s No Planet B’ T-shirt looked, especially over her tight abs. Her purple skirt with a large black yoga ohm sign on it was cool too.

The old man signed the petition and walked away. Dad stepped forwards. ‘Hi Jenny, this is my partner Caitlin and my daughter Phoebe.’

‘So nice to meet you,’ she said, straightening some brochures on the table. And then she flashed me a huge smile.

‘Jenny is one of my students,’ Dad explained.

We nodded and Dad asked Jenny, ‘What can we do to help?’

‘Can you hand out these brochures?’ she said, giving them to us.

I read one of the brochures that compared the number of jobs through coal fire power stations and renewable energy. Renewable energy won hands down, and despite my initial embarrassment of having to hand out brochures, I knew it was the right thing to do.

A huge crowd was swimming around me by the time I’d handed out all of the brochures. I’d lost Dad. I cut back through the crowd to where Jenny had given me the stack of flyers.

Dad and Caitlin were helping pack away the petition information and flyers. Jenny threw a megaphone over her shoulder. Bum-fluff guy picked up the supplies to ship off somewhere and we joined the march.

I always felt like a sheep among the flock when starting the first steps of a march. People’s footsteps as they hit the road sounded like rain falling on a roof. Beating drums and Jenny’s chanting through the megaphone soon broke the peace.

‘From oil and gas

To wind and sun

This power shift

It can be done.’

I don’t know if it was because of the drums or that it was like cheering at a basketball game, but I started chanting too. And because Jenny seemed really cool, I didn’t hesitate when she handed the megaphone to me. I started chanting like my life depended on it.

We walked down one of the main streets of the city between the high-rise offices, banks and department stores. Some shoppers on the footpath tried to ignore us while others joined in.

There was something about the way that an old man standing on the footpath looked at me that made me yell harder.

I handed Jenny back the megaphone before we reached the Park Lands. I followed Dad and Caitlin over to the stage where an old scientist-looking dude with a grey beard was preparing to speak.

When Jenny got up on stage and started talking, rousing people into a frenzy, including myself, I saw the pride on Dad’s face. It was the same look that he had given me a lot over the years: when I tried and learned new things, when I played a good game, when he saw me being kind.